How Watching Porn Is Good For You

Are XXX Movies Secretly Good For You? We Investigate

Sometimes, it seems that porn will be under intense scrutiny by nudity-fearing public officials until the end of time. Whether or not it has positive, negative, or any effects on the general population in general will be pontificated on until a general consensus is made and ultimately abandoned. What does porn do to us? Does it make us into better lovers or turn us into zombies?

Some suggest the latter. In a study conducted at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, 64 adult males reported their pornography consumption for a short period of time and then had their brains studied. They found a significant correlation with pornography intake and gray matter volume in the part of the brain associated with reward sensitivity.

However, some studies say that there are benefits. Carnegie Mellon University says it can relieve stress and a Danish study concluded that pornography has “had primarily a positive effect on various aspects of their lives.” Since there are so many different science-backed sides to this story, we decided to take our opinion to a source who knows porn more than the average person — a porn star.

Joanna Angel runs BurningAngel.com, a massively popular porno site with an alt-twist in which she directs, produces, and stars in videos of her own. She’s won numerous AVN awards for her work, briefly wrote a sex advice column for Spin, and acts in independent movies on the side. Joanna Angel knows porn, which is why we wanted to get her opinion on how good (or bad) porn is for us.

AskMen: Have people told you how your work has affected them?

Joanna Angel: “I have a lot of couples that are fans. A lot of couples come to see me when I do appearances. It's kind of interesting because you really can't choose your own fame… I never actually set out to make porn for couples at all. That was never my intention.

Why? What is it about your porn that they like so much?

Just the style of the my porn is a little bit more relatable than some of other companies, you know. I don't know, I think I have this thing about me which is kind of awesome and a little almost insulting at the same time. I think people look at me having anal sex or doing these sex acts, and they're like, ‘Wow, if she can do it, I can do it too,’ because I'm not very... I don't look like a super-human. I don't know, I think a lot of girls feel not threatened by me or something, so they're cool with their husbands jerking off to me. I don't know. I think I've gotten that a lot.

They're like, ‘Oh, my husband wouldn't leave me for that girl so it's cool.’ I don't know what it is. I'm just not very glamorous and I make funny faces when I have sex. I've had a lot of younger couples tell me they've watched my porn together. Husbands and wives that are older, and middle age couples that told me they have tried having a threesome or an orgy because of a movie they saw of mine.

That’s great — so, you really inspire sex.

Yeah, and sex is a difficult topic to talk about. Some people don't always talk about sex with their friends. There seems to be something about my porn that a lot of couples are like, ‘All right. They did it, we can do it too.’ For whatever reason. I like that. It always makes me very happy when I think that people can watch my stuff and do something fun in their own life.

Do you think you just inspire them to have sex? Or… is there more?

If somebody wants to wear the same clothes as me and try to mimic the same positions, then that's cool too. I just think that people will have more fun if they just kind of watch it and let their own sexual ideas roll in their brain. I also do know some of my feature movies, the parodies I make, or the movies that I have with plots and scripts and characters and stuff like that, I know people watch them together. They'll watch them like movies, and that's cool.

So people try to imitate you… is that always a good thing?

Yeah, like I said, you don't need to copy every single position that we do. There's definitely positions that we do in porn that look good for the camera, but they're not something you should need to do at home. Some of these sex positions are ones that we don't do at home.

Which one?

Which one would I never do at home? I guess, is it regular cowgirl when you're looking away from the person?

Shoot, I can never remember.

People always laugh at me on set because I never remember… reverse is when she's facing the camera and you see her face and her tits, and regular is when you see her ass. Anyway, yeah, that's not that comfortable at all — it’s not very intimate.

In 2016, I think it's just a place where, if two people are curious about something and want to explore something, you can probably find it on-camera somewhere in the internet, and then, maybe it will help the two people sort of go, ‘Oh, well look at that. That exists. Someone did it. How do we feel about that now after watching that? Is that something we want to try? Is it not?" It just gives people a bigger freedom and a bigger playing field to explore things that they were too scared or nervous or awkward to bring up with their partner before.

So porn makes us brave?

When I first gave a blow job, the first time in my life, I had literally never seen anybody else give a blowjob. I had no idea. Of course, I had friends that were girls that were trying to show me things on bananas or whatever. I had no idea what to do so I just kind of guessed. I gave the world's worst blowjob when I first gave a blowjob. That's probably why my boyfriend wound up cheating on me.

I think it's important for women to be sexually knowledgeable and sexually confident. I think it could definitely help when women walk into their first sexual encounters, they have a frame of reference, just something in their brain to be like, ‘Okay. Here's what this is supposed to look like.’